It's a scream... but spare us the ghastly soundtrack

It has been nearly 20 years since the great Peter Ustinov joked that he would hate to occupy the hotel room next to that of Monica Seles on her wedding night.

Now, in 2011, we are still on the subject of women tennis players who exhale an ear-splitting yelp with every contact.

Making herself heard: Sharapova's grunt is infamous

So instead of focusing exclusively on the terrific battle between Maria Sharapova and Laura Robson, it is hard to ignore the unpleasant noise that accompanied the Russian's victory.

It was surely not just the nationality, ball-striking or underdog status of the 17-year-old that had the whole of Court No 1 on her side.

The talented and otherwise charismatic Sharapova always loses friends with the ghastly soundtrack to her high standard of play.

Spare a thought, too, for Elena Baltacha and Shuai Peng, who were out on No 18 and within earshot of the big screen on Henman Hill.

The wheels of tennis officialdom move painfully slowly, but I understand that top-level discussions on the matter are starting to take shape among the hierarchies of the tours and the four Grand Slams.

One idea being given serious currency is to provide umpires with sound monitoring machines to measure the level of the grunts so that a tangible limit can be set and sanctions enforced.

Again, this comes 20 years after ingenious Fleet Street reporters first took their famous 'gruntometers' on to the old Court No 1 to compare Seles with jets taking off at Heathrow.

Noisy players are now the subject of more complaints from the public at Wimbledon than anything else, having long overtaken spitting, which has virtually died out.

Hence All England Club chief executive Ian Ritchie abandoning the usual cautious tone and being fairly outspoken on the topic this week: 'We have made it clear to the tours that we would like to see less of it,' he said.

But officials on the international circuit will tell you that this issue excites comment far more in England and Australia than anywhere else (which says a bit about how close we are to our Commonwealth cousins).

Wherever tennis is played there exists legislation of sorts covering this area.

Section 26 in the Rules of Tennis covers the area of 'hindrance' of opponents during a match.

Yet players hate to complain as they will see it as conceding an edge in the psychological battle, however much they feel put off.

And of course nobody knows exactly how many thousands or millions of tennis followers are turned off by it.

Sharapova is not alone, and no sooner had she finished on Friday than the gifted Belarusian Victoria Azarenka was treating the reluctant Centre Court crowd to her lingering whine upon hitting every ball, which is probably worse.

How about telling them all that, from January 1 next year, grunting or yelping on every point - as opposed to occasionally doing it under pressure, which is quite understandable - is outlawed?